No, Doug, I didn't say they dropped both of them. I said one lost much of its long time clients in trying to meet the price points and supply for Wal Mart Quality of the products was not the issue. One of them lost many of its long time customers because selling to Wal Mart was seen as a conflict in areas where the National Parks are located, so the park concessions began cutting back on orders from the shirt company that had become a Wal Mart vendor. As the profit margin with Wal Mart is slimmer because of the price points they demand, the volume did not make up for the National Park and souvenir shops in destination resorts that were set aside because of Wal Mart. The other company, the one that I went to Bentonville with as their freelance artist, eventually closed in part because of Wal Mart vendor rules being constantly changed.

Wal Mart has an internal revolving door of buyers. One month you're dealing with one person who has an idea to, as a real example, put "western" art on shirts in all the ladies apparel departments in the Rockies. It projects that they'll buy X number of dozens of garments. They write the order, all the vendor's other clients are put on the back burner, the buyer at Wal Mart gets transfered to another division and the new buyer says, No, I've got a different idea. The constant internal changing of personnel making the buying decisions and the changing of rules of what stores you could sell to, etc., are a notorious Wal Mart "game" in the manufacturer's industry. People who have been burned by Wal Mart are an example for others to be leery of becoming a vendor.

Alice